Learning curve

"A steep learning curve refers to a situation where a person is expected to learn a new skill or knowledge rapidly, often in a short period." 

That pretty much sums up the first couple of months of our life on a wine farm.

Let me start with my job (Neill will tell you about his in the Delores Diaries below).

I'll throw a few terms out - capsules, SAWIS, Vignerons, BG11's, ZebraDesigner, dosage, disgorging, cork taint, waybill, sustainability practices, VCC's...

These are all things that I knew practically zip about - but the journey up that steep curve involved collecting tools for my skills toolbox. 

The first task was to get to know the wines. 

My colleague, Jackie, had made me a folder with tasting notes of our 11 wines as well as other pertinent information about the tasting room, orders, sales etc. I thought I knew quite a lot about wine but soon realised that I didn't, and still had an enormous amount of learning to do. I signed up for an online wine course to refresh myself on some of the basics - like the characteristics of the various cultivars. I've finished both levels of that course and plan to start the more rigorous, international WSET (Wine & Spirit Education Trust) course in the near future. 

Anyway, listening and tasting helped me to become familiar with our wines, and my confidence in presenting and selling them increased. As you know, I love talking to people and I love wine, so talking to people about wine is certainly no punishment for me. 

Getting to grips with the back-end of the wine business involves so many different things - orders, invoicing, freight, exports etc. as well as regulatory requirements like submitting BG11's to SAWIS (SA Wine Industry Information & Systems) to obtain certification for our wines to be exported. After the online process has been done - the information is recorded on "pink cards" - the most important source of information for the wine maker. It was a tad nerve wrecking at first, but the more I do - the more confident I get. 

The ZebraDesigner label maker moved to my desk and Craig handed over the job of printing back labels for our bottles. As a boutique winery producing only about 85 000 bottles a year, a lot of our processes are manual and everyone is very hands-on. As a result, every label on the back of our bottles (telling you about the contents) is printed by us and stuck onto the bottles by hand. That job belongs to Candice our labeler, capsuler, packer, palette stacker and dispatcher. 

Our entire staff compliment on the farm consists of 10 people - from winemaker to landscape technician. We're a lean, keen team that gets the work done.

The wine making process is fascinating and none more so than the making of Cap Classique. What an absolute treat to watch this process from start to finish. More detail about this in a forth-coming blog.

 

Another part of my three part job, is running the five cottages on the farm. Hospitality - mmmm, not without its challenges but by-and-large, so far we have had really nice guests. For seven or eight weeks were were closed due to the revamps we did and the paving of the road. This really helped me to get used to the systems and processes without having to deal with guests.

The first thing I had to learn was how to find my way around Booking.com. It's very easy as a guest, not so easy as a host. We also have a booking enquiry system on our own website which doesn't speak to Booking.com. I very quickly realised that this had potential for double-bookings, so I created a system for myself. Every booking that comes in is recorded in five places - Booking.com, our own website's back-end, a spreadsheet on my laptop (for the purposes of collecting data), a hardcopy calendar on my desk and on a whiteboard in the office (for Neill and our cleaning lady, Hannie to see). Rather arduous. Hopefully this will get easier when we have a new integrated website. 

Then there is procurement. Linen - do we have plain duvet covers, or the Oxford style? White towels or dark grey? Do we need pillow protectors? What kind of mats should we have for the showers? Do we need a fitted sheet for our little cot? What fragrance of room diffuser should I choose? Finding the provider and choosing the items pushed me somewhat out of my comfort zone, but it got done. Then there are the little things have to be ordered and bought regularly. Toilet paper, coffee, tea, sugar, milk, dishwashing liquid, black bags etc. Let's just say Makro and I have become very close. 

Some guests do require a bit of extra attention, but most are pretty chilled which is great. I've had requests for champagne in the room, extra wood, flowers, cards, balloons and the like, but I'm learning where to draw the line. 

On one of the first weekends that we were full, we had a group of women who were celebrating a 50th birthday. It was just after we had installed an inverter and battery back up which had a fault and loadshedding was in full swing. As a result - there was no power, and the hostess had prepared a birthday meal which needed heating. So we brought everything back down to the manor house where we had a generator, heated it all up and returned it hot, with bottle of wine in hand to apologise. Later that night one of the ladies called Neill to ask him how she was going to make her morning coffee without power. Neill was not happy but bit his tongue and asked what time he could bring up a boiled kettle for her! Fortunately, the power was restored so ferrying hot water was not required. Oh well, all part of the job I guess.

Another time, we were without power for five days - placating our guests who could not have hot showers, access to Wi-Fi or use a microwave, required lots of sorrys, wide smiles, and a couple of bottles of wine but in the end, we still got a 10/10 rating on Booking.com!

An addition that I made, which I'm pretty chuffed with, is a "room book" for each cottage. This folder contains all the info needed for staying in the cottage as well as the history of the farm, info about the winemaker and our wines, restaurant and wine farm recommendations, things to see and do in the area, etc.  And it was fun.

I even write the quotes on the chalkboard - which we made ourselves!

Setting a standard and working with others to keep it up, is somewhat of a challenge for me as I know what I want, but find it difficult to get others to be on board. The handles on the cannisters for the tea, coffee, sugar need to face the same direction! Training staff therefore became necessary to get everyone up to scratch.

As I mentioned, we're a lean team and we all jump in and do what's required, so a couple of times on a weekend I've had to go in and "turn a cottage over" for guests arriving that day. Neill gets called up from time to time to sort out tripped electricity, check a gas connection, drop off some wood and sometimes he just chats to them (yip, can you believe that!) telling them how to get up to the dam, where to go for walks and the like. 

It's all in a day's work (and night).  

The third part of my job is for another day...

A different kind of office! Stony Brook Vineyards tasting room with proteas that we pick on the farm.

Getting to know our wines

The back labels on our bottles. Candice (back) and Roche (who helps out when we have big orders) labelling our Cap Classique. 

Weekly chalkboards

DELORES DIARIES

Snippets from Neill's voice notes...

"CONSTRUCTION! What a different ball game. And throwing weather conditions into the mix"

"The magnitude of repairs and maintenance work that needs to be done. There is just so much!"

"Terminology and standardisation - takes some getting used to"

"The terminology in the Western Cape is different to the Eastern Cape. For example HOOPLE. I ask for it at Agrimark and they don't know what it is. It has a different name here. It's like being asked "go and buy me a ball" but when I get there, I'm asked if it's a yellow tennis ball or a brown rugby ball. So I now I've resorted to drawing pictures - the universal language."

"There's no standardisation of water pipes for example so I have to break or cut a piece off to take with me so that I buy the right thing".

"...the shopping still seems strange to me! But things need to be bought and I need to buy them. From high strain steel wire for fencing to drain cleaner for cottage showers."

"Dealing with the elements. Persistent, excessive rain. Cold. Wind - even worse than PE."

"Taking on the responsibility of the farm over weekends. How to sort out water outages or leaks. Finding the DB boards, sorting out tripped electricity"

"Dealing with very different people - colleagues who are so different to my old colleagues - and guests - that is something very different for me. Things are much more fluid and less defined. Multi-tasking. Taking on things that I knew nothing about but now have to make them happen. Like putting the CO2 into the wine tanks when Craig is away. Managing the farm when there are very few processes in place."

"Learning a different lifestyle"

"Cohabiting with others every two to three weeks when the Fultons come down from PE" 

These are just a few of the new tools that Neill is collecting along this learning curve - the list continues to grow.

Construction happening around the farm.

New beginnings

Day one at Stony Brook greeted us with warm sunshine and mountain views second to none.

We took a walk around the farm to get our bearings and find our farm legs, still in disbelief that we were now living and working on a wine farm in Franschhoek. Well, not quite working yet - as 1 May was a public holiday which was perfect for settling in.

Making our way back to the manor house after our walk, a car came up the driveway towards the tasting room and I panicked at the thought of wine tasters visiting (even though we were closed) when I didn't know a thing about the wines at that stage! Car stops - front seat passenger starts talking to Neill and then I saw our very special friends, Pieter and Anthony, who had driven from Riebeek Kasteel to welcome us to the Western Cape. A true gesture of love and care.

The 2nd of May dawned - our first day of work. Meeting our new colleagues - Craig the winemaker and Jackie, our marketing person, we quickly realised that there was much the learn. But, our mantra was go-with-the-flow, learn new things, walk new paths, and experience what the wine industry is all about.

The first week was a blur of learning about the wines, learning about the farm, getting to know the people who work here and of course, enjoying this tiny spot on the African continent where we were to carve out a new home.

Our first visit into town (a whole 5km away) was on our bikes with backpacks to bring our groceries home.

After three days of camping in the empty manor house, we moved into one of the cottages that I would be running. Cottage 5 - the big one, with two bedrooms and a lovely, spacious living area. It was awesome! The incredible view of the mountains so close, the babbling brook (literally) just metres from the door and the sound of birds in the trees. Did I mention the multitude of protea bushes that line the road to the cottages? Two weeks of heaven albeit it without a good wi-fi signal. This is a farm after all. Bookings had been made for the cottage so we trekked our meagre belongings back to the manor house where a few additions to the furniture and kitchen items had been procured.

This house had a different view, offering a front row seat to spectacular sunsets and vineyards touched by the red paint brush of Autumn. We loved it. A much simpler life than we had become accustomed to. Less clutter. More nature. We now had a bed, couch, a TV (propped up on an old sewing machine cupboard of Joy McNaught's), plastic table and a couple of chairs, a fridge, microwave and a few more kitchen essentials. And wine. Mostly Stony Brook wine.

The manor house has a small wine cellar and Nigel, the previous winemaker had a left a few bottles behind when they moved. Craig told us to help ourselves - they're old and probably no good anyway he said. Our eyes were as big as saucers. WHAT? you're letting us taste this vintage wine? All our Christmases had come at once. A 2001 Cab, a 2008 Syrah, etc. Some were great - some had passed their prime but the experience was priceless.

Moving on to homework. Of the gustatory and olfactory variety. Getting to know the Stony Brook wines was required for the job, so almost every day, I was sent home with a bottle or two (that had a glass left in it) left over from the tasting room. We had to learn about the nose and the palette of our wines and no better way to learn, than from your glass. It's fantastic to be part of a wine farm that produces some exceptional wines. More about this in a forthcoming blog.

So many things changed in our lives. From braaiing three times a week to...well, pretty much never. Finding new social places - like Taki's for after-work drinks and The Station Pub to watch our new team, The Stormers, in the Rugby Championship. The people here are friendly, and welcoming. Not snobbish and aloof as we thought.

We changed our "home" Parkrun to Franschhoek and did our first one on the Rickety Bridge Wine Farm on the first Saturday in May (it's not as nice as Hobie Beach mind you!)

There's no hooting taxis, no litter, no traffic lights, no protesting students, no Music Kitchen - that we miss a lot!

We like it here. We think we'll stay.

With our special friend Pieter Swart on Day 1 in Franschhoek

The "warm room" in the manor house on Day 1

The warm room two weeks later after a couch and TV had been bought

Autumn in the vineyards at sunset

DELORES DIARIES

More snippets from Neill's voice notes (see previous blog for an explanation of this if you are only coming in at this point)

4 May 2023
"...I'm starting to work on instilling a new mindset of a place for everything in it's place - where it's needed. Bev made her first sale. We had the most fantastic experience - tasting four of our wines WITH Craig, the winemaker. The details of how each wine was made. Special, really special."

6 May 2023
"...this is the steepest learning curve we have ever had."

12 May 2023
"...we mustn't forget to remember that we're living the dream. It's flippen awesome here - I love it. In terms of work - I'm on a much clearer path now, of what I have to do."

18 May 2023
"...it's dark here. You can see the milky way. Bev is learning all the parts of her new job. I've been locked into a working career where you work from this time to that time. Today I went into town to buy stuff for the farm - how weird to be paid to go shopping. After hours work is very much part of the job, but we have bought into this project and we want to be part of the journey of improvement."

25 May 2023
"...it has been raining persistently the entire day and it's getting cold."

31 May 2023
"...this is the 3rd night in a row that it has rained. Jissie, it can rain here! It's cold - but I'm acclimatising. It's a simple life. I heard one bit of news in the car today - the first in a month."

How did we get here?

So here we are - living our own dream, on a wine farm in the Valley of Dreams, Franschhoek. But how did we get here?

About five years ago, our long-time, close friends - Vaughn and Claire Fulton - told us that they were looking for a wine farm for a foreign business partner of  Vaughn's. The basic instruction was to find a farm, but it came with a list of other prerequisites. Not much further than an hour from Cape Town airport, close to nice restaurants, shops and other good wineries and most importantly, it must have a stunning view!

When we found out about this proposal, we told Vaughn that we wanted in - and that when he found this elusive farm, we wanted first dibs on coming to live and work on it.

Every now and again, Vaughn would tell us about this or that farm that he was looking at, but none seemed to fit the bill. Never-the-less, we continued to tell him that when he found the farm, we wanted to be part of the plan. Wink, wink - as if that was ever going to happen.

For 30 years, we have been on a wine journey. Visiting wine farms, being part of wine clubs, learning, tasting and experiencing wine - it has become a mutual passion. Many a time we would stop at a wine farm for a tasting to be met by a lacklustre employee who knew precious little about the wine and didn't show much enthusiasm for the job. I often thought that I could do better, and in fact, always dreamed of doing the job.

In January of 2023, Vaughn and Claire announced that they had found the farm and the pie-in-the-sky dream started to look like it just may become reality.

The farm is Stony Brook in the Bo-Hoek of Franschhoek - a farm we had visited 24 years prior, where the warmth and friendliness of Joy McNaught (former owner) was something we have always remembered.

I dug around in my old photo albums and found this pic of me tasting the wine at Stony Brook in 1998 (one or two of those chairs are still on the farm!).

During a trip to the Western Cape in February, we visited Stony Brook with the Fultons and stayed for two days, sharing our thoughts about how the farm could be improved without losing its charm and authenticity. 

A week later, Vaughn asked us if we "were in". Neill's immediate reply was "hell, yeah!" but I started to have reservations, worrying about my pension and thinking that it may be best to stick out the three years I had left at the university before I had planned to retire, and continue to build up by pension fund that I had already worked 35 years towards building.

So we had some discussions and thought lots of thoughts and I asked myself if in three years time, I would be happy and satisfied to say that I had given up an opportunity to live my dream in exchange for a little more financial stability. Obviously the answer was NO so I handed in my resignation and Neill bid farewell to the four months of retirement he had thoroughly enjoyed, and we told Vaughn that "we're in!"

I worked my six week notice period and finished off all the projects I was working on, while we made plans for our move, arranging the management of our PE home by our son, Dean and tying up all our loose ends.

We had the farewells and I shed the tears for the amazing colleagues and friends (and our awesome neighbours!) that we were to leave behind. 

Saying goodbye to Dean and to our dogs Oli and Gracie and our kitty, Skyler was tough, but that was the sacrifice required to grab this opportunity and do something totally different. 

Would we regret it? Somehow I doubted it. 

On Friday the 28th of April we had a final farewell with our music-loving friends at our favourite spot The Music Kitchen. The next morning, we packed the car with our clothes, an airfryer, slow cooker, some books, a Bluetooth speaker, a photo frame of our children and that was pretty much about it.

We headed off down the N2 and broke the journey with a visit to our good friends Candy and Ralph in Knysna. 

Sunday, 30 April 2023 - we arrived at our new home on Green Valley Road, just a five minute drive from the stunning town of Franschhoek. 

Warmly greeted by the winemaker and his wife - Craig and Juanne McNaught - we felt welcome and ready to start this new adventure. After settling into the empty Manor House with nothing more than a mattrass, bedding and a few kitchen basics, we poured ourselves a glass of wine to take in our first Stony Brook sunset. 

May we never forget how the view took our breath away on the first evening. 

DELORES DIARIES

Neill has been recording voice notes since this journey started to take shape. He calls them his "Delores Diaries" - making reference to the late Delores O'Riordan of the Cranberries who sang a song called Zombie with lyrics "What's in your head, in your head?" These are a couple of the thoughts that were in his head, which he recorded while sitting outside, listening to birds and enjoying nature...

30 January 2023
"...would love to go and live on a wine farm. That's my goal. Bev's a bit hesitant because something always happens."

12 February 2023
"...Bev will be able to do this job. In terms of running the accommodation - Bev will know the dog's name, and the cat and the bunny - before the people leave.." "So what can I bring to the table? I like improving processes and making things work better. I see a future in this...Vaughn, you've found a pearler"

21 February 2023

"We've played it safe our whole life and built up enough to retire on and it's time to take a jump, so let's do this! Debbie's post this morning was very inspirational...I'd love to go and live out on a farm - away from taxis etc. and make a difference".

23 February 2023

"...you don't have anything to lose, you only have to gain!" said Pieter, Bev's boss, mentor and our friend for over 35 years.

24 February 2023

"...wine has been our thing. It's been a passion of ours and the fantasy of working on a wine farm is cool BUT living the process of something that we've been interested in for so long - seeing how it's made - how many people have that opportunity? It's not going to be easy, we're going to pushed out of our comfort zone completely in all realms, but it's going to be an interesting journey"

3 March 2023

"...Vaughn phoned and said "Eriksum, are you in on this thing?" and I said YES Vaughn, we're in! So, that was signing on the dotted line. I'm starting to get excited" 

12 March 2023

"...it's going to be so exciting, Bev and I working on the same project, the same cause, and seeing the changes and improvements and having a helluva life experience".

Episode two - "New Beginnings" will follow soon, accompanied by a few more Delores Diaries entries.